Texas wildfires

Rick Perry’s flirtation with a 2012 presidential campaign dominate your favorite posts of last week on Texas on the Potomac. Other favorite stories include the mystery of the Texas license plate “WTF 44″ and Ron Paul’s thoughts about Pakistan.
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House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee have voted to slash funding for local homeland security grants and disaster assistance. The vote came just after a massive tornado destroyed much of Joplin, Mo., as Texans were trying to recover from wildfires that scorched 2.2 million acres of the Lone Star State, and as border county officials continue to cope with drug violence and illegal immigration.
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Conservative radio talk show host and best-selling author Laura Ingraham got tongues wagging in Texas today when she declared that Rick Perry is running for president in 2012. Ingraham was doing an interview with conservative Indiana congressman Mike Pence when she let loose with her Perry “scoop.”
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President Obama is weighing a proposal by the Congressional Black Caucus to have unemployed youth work this summer on disaster clean up across the tornado belt and states flooded by the Mississippi River.

That’s the word from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, a member of the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus that met privately with the president at the White House this afternoon.

Six Republican lawmakers from Texas once again implored President Obama today to provide federal disaster assistance to Texas for fighting the wildfires that have raged over 2.2 million acres — about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The GOP representatives chalked up Obama’s refusal to grant Gov. Rick Perry’s request to punishing the state for not voting for him.

Even though Obama has granted disaster declarations to several states that didn’t vote for him, such as North Dakota, Alabama and Mississippi, Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, said that’s because he is “going after the big boys.”

In the week since the federal government denied Gov. Rick Perry’s request to have most of Texas granted major disaster status, leading Republicans have knocked FEMA’s decision, leaving the impression Washington is not assisting the fight against the massive wildfires plaguing rural counties.

It is an impression disputed by officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who awarded Texas its 26th grant Sunday to help cover the cost of fire fighting efforts.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the state’s Republican leadership remains peeved at President Obama’s response to the wildfires that have charred 2.2 million acres of Texas in recent months.

Latest manifestation of their pique: Gov. Perry declined a White House invitation to meet the president when Obama lands in El Paso today to deliver a major policy speech on immigration.

But Obama’s White House spokesman, Jay Carney, wants you to know this: The administration doesn’t think it’s slighted Texas in any way.

“I think it’s important for everyone to know that this administration has been extremely responsive to the state of Texas’ requests for wildfire management assisting grants — 25 of them at last count,” he told reporters on Air Force One en route to El Paso. “All that have been requested had been, as far as I know it, have been provided.”